This page lists my current projects, followed by a list of conference papers representative of my primary concerns. For a list of published and/or forthcoming work, see the Publications page.
Literature, Media, Synthetic Life
This project considers a cluster of twentieth- and twenty-first-century literary and media objects in the Anglophone tradition in conjunction with developments and breakthroughs in computing, bioengineering, and cognitive neurosciences in order to study the emergence of synthetic life forms across literary-cultural imaginaries and media infrastructures. [A more detailed description will be added soon.]
Brain Medicine and the Recovery Memoir
This project examines narrative accounts—from memoirs by individuals who have recovered from brain diseases to case histories of neurological patients—alongside medical documents to explore the cultural and narrative distinctions between laboratory findings and clinical or social practices. It also considers the growing exchanges in recent medical and health humanities research between these domains. By combining the study of the scientific foundations of disease memoirs with cultural analyses of scientific texts, the project seeks to uncover the rhetorical strategies shaping medicine, care, and assistance.
Medical Geographies of Colonial Assam
This broad track concerns itself with a wide range of materials—reports by British medical officers, articles of various types in Assamese magazines and periodicals, works of fiction dealing with medicine and health in the region—to gain a better understanding of the intersection of health and medicine in this part of India, where I was born and where I lived for decades.
Colonialism, Hunting, and Northeast India
My current focus is on the relationship between hunting and resource extraction in Undivided Assam. Figures of interest include nitib shikaris like Tarun Ram Phukan and Prasannalal Choudhury, and European hunters like Frank Nicholls and Patrick Hanley, who operated in the region. Here, my interest extends into the Assam-Burma connection.
Speculative Fiction in Assamese
The rich history of speculative fiction in Assamese, which begins in the Ābāhana period, has been an abiding interest. From early, rather simplistic narratives of drug induced hallucinations to more sophisticated engagements with developments in bioengineering and neuroscience in works produced around the turn of the century, SF in Assamese as a broad genre has come to attain a discursive complexity that demands serious interdisciplinary approaches. An article on the brain-computer interface in contemporary Assamese SF is currently under preparation. I’m also working on a public-facing piece that traces the genealogy of writings in Assamese on gerontology and life extention.
CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS
“Storying Worlds of Radical Alterity: The Self and the Other in the Fiction of Life Extension.” Stanford-Berkeley English Graduate Conference, Stanford University. April 22-23, 2023. [Presented virtually]
“Impermanence and Creative Assimilation: Notes Toward an Episteme of the Ephemeral.” 17th Annual Madison Literature and Language Graduate Conference, University of Wisconsin-Madison. April 16, 2023. [Presented virtually]
“From Mnémotechnique to Mnemotechnology: Forgetting and Recall in the Digital Ecology.” Annual International Conference of the Indian Network for Memory Studies (INMS): “Memory in a Digital Age,” Centre for Memory Studies, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai. August 23-25, 2022.